Pulling the Roots Out

During my time studying in Melbourne, Australia, I rented a house with a few friends. It was almost love at first sight with the house. It was spacious, the layout was nice, an awesome kitchen and there was enough room for all four of us boys. It also had a enough space in the back for a garden. That’s the problem. Non of us were the gardening type and no one really liked weeding. So we did all smart pragmatic university students did, we left it to thrive in its full glory driven by the force of nature.

The problem came when it was time for our annual house inspection by the rental agent. We can’t let her find out we were growing a amazon jungle in the backyard. So we did what all brave Indiana Jones would do, we venture into the jungle and started weeding. Well, we discovered it wasn’t as difficult as it looked. A month before the inspection, we swung by the local Bunnings Hardware Store and got ourselves a good grass cutter. Within half an hour, we trimmed all the weeds down to size and we patted ourselves on the back , closed the blinds on the glass door and went back to our full time job – watching the world cup.

Little did we know that weeding does not only encompass trimming the top of the weed down to size, it meant pulling out the roots as well. Weeds are called weeds for a reason. They are indestructible, grows overnight into giant beanstalks that reaches the giant’s kingdom in the skies and have crazy strong roots. A day before the inspection, we decided to have one last check of the house. To our horror, the Amazon jungle came back from its holiday and was right back in our backyard. We have failed to pull the roots out and the weeds grew back stronger. So the four of us spent the rest of the day breaking our back going through the entire backyards uprooting our nemesis.

Unforgiveness are like weeds in our lives. The roots run deep and strong. Given enough time, it may even fester into areas of our lives affecting it. What we need to do is to uproot it through the power of Christ. We cannot simply bury those hurts in our lives. We need to uproot it.

This coming Sabbath, I’ll be dwelling into this topic more in my sermon “When You Believe in God but Won’t Forgive”. I hope to see you at the Seventh-day Adventist Community Church (SDACC) alternatively you can watch our videos or listen to our podcast that will be uploaded next Wednesday.